Dietary Minerals

Dietary minerals are chemical elements required by living organisms. They can
be either bulk minerals (required in relatively large amounts) or trace
minerals (required only in very small amounts).

These can be naturally occurring in food or added in elemental or mineral
form, such as calcium carbonate or sodium chloride. Some of these additives
come from natural sources such as ground oyster shells. Sometimes minerals
are added to the diet separately from food, as vitamin and mineral supplements
and in dirt eating, called pica or geophagy.

Appropriate intake levels of each dietary mineral must be sustained
to maintain physical health. Excessive intake of a dietary mineral may
either lead to illness directly or indirectly because of the competitive
nature between mineral levels in the body. For example, large doses
of zinc are not really harmful unto themselves, but will lead to a harmful
copper deficiency (unless compensated for, as in the Age-Related Eye
Disease Study).

Soils in different geographic areas contain varying quantities of minerals.

In human nutrition, the most important dietary minerals include
(in alphabetical order):

Secondary dietary minerals. Standards of evidence vary for different
elements, and not all have been definitively established as essential
to human nutrition. Elements for which convincing scientific evidence
is lacking are marked as suspect. This category includes:

Other elements essential to life include calcium, carbon, hydrogen,
nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sodium and sulfur. These are not generally
considered trace elements, as they are needed in larger quantities.
Iron and potassium are needed in larger quantities than the other listed
minerals and are sometimes considered trace elements, and sometimes
not. Sodium is needed in large quantities, but the mineral is found
so commonly in food, it is not generally necessary to take additional
supplements. Various other elements found in food supplies may vary
from holding no known nutritional value (such as silver) to being toxic
(such as mercury).